Opus in 218 B.C.

Opus — Spring 218 BC · The Locrians in the Social War.

Opus (Opous) — the chief city of the Opuntian, or Eastern, Locrians, set back a little from the Euboean Gulf in central Greece and giving its name to the Locrian koinon that gathers about it. It is an ancient and proud little polis rather than a great power: the homeland, men say, of Patroclus the friend of Achilles and of the Lesser Ajax, Ajax son of Oïleus who led the Locrians to Troy. Its plain is narrow, its towns few, and it is hemmed between Boeotia to the south and the Epicnemidian Locrians and the wall of Oeta to the north-west. In 218 BC all central Greece is convulsed by the Social War, and Locris lies in the orbit of Philip V of Macedon and the Achaean cause against the raiding Aetolians, whose passes open straight onto its borders.

Opus is a city that lives more on memory and good name than on power. It is the eponymous head of the Opuntian Locrians, a small federal people of the central Greek coast facing Euboea across its narrow gulf, and it carries the proudest of pedigrees: from Opus came Patroclus, dearest companion of Achilles, and the Lesser Ajax, son of Oïleus, who led the Locrian contingent against Troy. But pedigree does not bar an enemy. The Locrian plain is small, its harbours modest, and its frontiers brush against powers far greater than itself. In 218 BC the Social War has set the Macedon-led Hellenic alliance and the Achaeans against the Aetolian League, whose mountain raiders strike out of the west through Phocis and Locris at will. Opus and its koinon are bound to the cause of Macedon and the Achaeans, a small ally whose loyalty matters less for its spears than for the road its land guards along the gulf toward Thermopylae and Boeotia.